


Illuminated Manuscripts

by Calima



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, also why not to date a poet, why to date a poet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 19:38:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1440328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calima/pseuds/Calima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Findis is insecure. Elemmírë is melodramatic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Illuminated Manuscripts

The houses of the Vanyar have three walls. The space that would otherwise be occupied by a fourth is sometimes hung with curtains, or covered by paper screens. More often, it is left open. The houses of the Vanyar face the Corollairë, and they are bathed in constant light. Findis remembers asking her mother if it was very cold, in those open rooms, and if she should send her cousins blankets, when next the merchants leave for Valimar. Indis had finished braiding her hair, tied the plaits with blue silk ribbons, and kissed her forehead. But she did not answer. 

The question seems foolish, in Elemmírë’s house. Her dark hair soaks up Laurelin’s heat, burning the back of her neck. She has brought the writing desk outside, and their low bed. Vanyarin furniture is light, thankfully, and not particularly abundant. The earth is faintly damp. Findis traced the lines of tengwar script in front of her with callused fingers. “And you mean it?”

“Of course. I think it’s lovely.” 

She squints at the page. “It is passable, at best. I don’t mind, I can tell you don't like it.” The ink comes away, and Elemmírë catches her hand.  
“Oh, my love, how could I? It is the work of your hands, which are more graceful than the branches of saplings, or the silver-plumed birds that walk among the gardens of Ilmarin” – she lifts the indigo-stained pad of Findis’s index finger to her lips – “and which taste of honey and mint.” 

She turns, pointedly, back towards the desk. “It’s no use trying to talk to you when you’re in one of your poetic moods. My hands are no more graceful than the common run. And they taste of ink.” 

“I could write a hundred songs about them.” She whispers the words in her ear, her own fingers trailing down Findis’s back. 

“So you’ve said.” Findis pauses to prepare a fresh pen. She can feel the beginnings of a headache. “You’re changing the subject.” 

Elemmírë throws herself onto the bed, misses, and lands with her head in patch of yarrow. “Am I really that obvious?” 

“Your talents are many and varied, but subtlety is not among them.” She refuses to look up from her work. Elemmírë picks lazily at a dense yellow blossom. 

“It’s … it’s not that I do not think it beautiful. I’m an artist, too. I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that. But it’s so strange to see my words fixed down, and quiet as – dead birds? Oh, no, that’s grotesque. I must be loosing my touch. See what happens when you mock me? Hmmm. Dried flowers? Abandoned temples? The home of someone you have loved and who now lives very far away? It doesn’t matter.” 

And Findis does turn towards her, this time. “It’s not like you to abandon a turn of phrase.” 

“You caught the sense of it, didn’t you?” Elemmírë sat up and tried to rub the grass stains from her clothes. “Did you know, my uncle refused to learn to write for two hundred years? And even then, only when Rúmil taught him. It’s something merchants do, and mathematicians, lords and loremasters. Not poets. You can’t have poetry without music.” 

The golden sky stretched clear and empty to the dark line of the Pélori. At this hour, the light seemed liquid, streaming from Elemmírë’s scalp and saturating the air. Perhaps, Findis reflected, that was why she found it so hard to breathe. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll tear it up, then.” 

“No!” Before she could move, Elemmírë was at her side, pulling the paper from her grasp. “Please, no.” She kissed the top of her head. “I wouldn’t want that.” Her jaw. “You’ve worked on the design for so long. I know how much this means to you.” Her lips. 

Findis was the first to break away. “I made it for you. You hate it. There’s no excuse, of course I should have known. It’s such a – such as Ñoldorin mistake.” 

“I never said that I – Findis. You’re wallowing.” 

“I’m having an understandably intense emotional reaction to the news that my –“ 

“You. Are. Wallowing. Come now, you know you do”

“I do not.” Findis darts after the sketch, and Elemmírë dances out of her reach.

“We all have faults, if it’s any consolation. Yours is self-pity. Mine is overwrought verse. Or so my uncle says, I personally believe that a certain gravitas –“ 

“I can think of a different word for it.” 

“You aren’t any fun anymore, you know that?” 

“Prolix.”

“Really.” 

“Long-winded. Verbose. Void take you!” This last as Elemmírë yanks the paper just outside her grip. 

“Then let me say this, as clearly as I’ve ever said anything. I don’t hate this. I think that it is beautiful, and every calligrapher in Tirion will be foaming at the mouth with hopeless jealousy when they see it. Is that plain enough?” 

“Have you ever been to Tirion?” 

“I don’t see why I should, when the best thing in it is here with me.” 

Findis smiles at that. “You’re a flatterer.” 

“I’m a poet.” 

“There’s a difference?” 

Elemmírë held the paper above her head, forcing Findis to for it. “Oh! You were almost close that time.” 

“I can’t help that you’re so unnaturally tall.” 

“I’m not tall. You, my dear, are unnaturally short. You’re sure you were properly nourished as a child? Or perhaps – ai!” Findis, misjudging the force of her next attempt, crashed into her, sending both of them sprawling on the grass. For a long time, they are quiet.

“Elemmírë?” 

“Yes?” 

“Are you alright?” 

She takes a moment to remove a lock of hair from her mouth. “For the most part.”

Findis rests her head just below Elemmírë’s collar bone. “Mhmmm.” 

“Findis?” 

“Yes?” 

“Do you plan on moving, any time in the near future?” 

“No.” 

More silence. The sky takes on a silver cast.

“Elemmírë. When you were attempting to steal my work – no protests, that’s what it was – did you see the way the light shone through the paper?” 

“Of course. Very lovely. Why?” 

“I’ve been thinking. I could make a window, with the pattern. More of a panel, I suppose. You could hang it so that it faced the trees. And as Laurelin wanes, and Telperion waxes – “

“The words would change.” 

“Their color.”

“The shadows on the floor.”

“Calligraphy in light.” 

“It’s brilliant. I am without words.” 

Findis pushes herself onto her elbows. “You? I doubt it.” And she bends her head down.


End file.
